Beijing (AP) :
China said Monday it had launched an international manhunt for the alleged mastermind behind an attack at a train station last month blamed on extremists from the Muslim Turkic Uighur ethnic group.
The official China Daily newspaper and other state media said a request had been submitted to Interpol for the arrest of Ismail Yusup and an unspecified number of associates.
The report said that Yusup was a member of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and organized the April 30 attack in the capital of the northwestern Xinjiang region that killed three people and injured 79 others.
Beijing says an organized militancy with elements based overseas is behind a rising number of terrorist attacks in the country. However, little evidence has been provided to back up the claim and many analysts doubt such an organization exists in a form that would enable it to organize attacks.
China had previously said the attack, in which explosives and knives were used, was carried out by two religious extremists who were killed in the blast.
The U.S. initially placed the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, known as ETIM,
on a terrorist watch list following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but later quietly removed it amid doubts that it existed in any organized manner. It is still listed as a terrorist group by the United Nations, over which China has considerable sway as one of five permanent veto-holding members of the Security Council.
